Everybody loves the Giants. They won the World Series twice. They built the beautiful ballpark that jump-started SoMa. And they attract more than 3 million fans a year.

They aren't just a baseball team. They are civic leaders.

Now they need to start acting like it.

When the team began to snipe at plans to put a basketball arena for the Warriors on the vacant, run-down Piers 30-32, we chalked it up to off-season crankiness. But now it is clear the Giants are actively discouraging the project.

That's not what they are saying, of course. Team spokeswoman Staci Slaughter says we've got the wrong idea.

"The Giants support the building of an arena for the Warriors in San Francisco," she said in a statement. "It is important, however, that the facility and site be thoroughly studied and planned so the project can function properly for the neighborhood and the city as a whole."

Their position is that is took them years to find the right location for the ballpark. Now the Warriors are rushing the process through. But in the 1990s, when the Giants' facility was on the drawing board, there were several sites to choose from. Now those have been filled with development. There simply aren't that many spots for an arena that might take up 5 acres or more.

Giants suggest Pier 50

Asked where they'd suggest, the Giants floated the idea of Pier 50, which is south of the ballpark, away from downtown, and off the busy Embarcadero corridor. Safely, in other words, away from AT&T, which would still be the center of the SoMa universe. (Oh, and if the Giants get their waterfront village built on parking lot A, basketball fans would be funneled right through their commercial village to go to a Pier 50 arena.)

It is hard to believe the Giants can raise some of these objections with a straight face. When they were planning what is now AT&T Park, all the familiar concerns were raised: a downtown facility would be a traffic nightmare, neighborhoods would be ruined, and the noise and congestion would be intolerable. The Giants battled through those perceptions, built a jewel of a ballpark, and won nearly everyone over.

But now that they are established in the neighborhood, the Giants have suddenly gone NIMBY, using the same congestion/traffic/public transit arguments.

Not that we shouldn't be apprehensive about traffic. As Ellen Warner, vice president of development for the Warriors, said: "Transportation is the No. 1 concern. I hear that at every meeting I attend. We realize we're moving into a very dense residential neighborhood. If it is gridlocked, it won't work for us either."

The Warriors had better get used to the intense feedback. This is not a neighborhood of shrinking violets. They are experienced, well-connected and knowledgeable. The Giants don't have to worry that this feisty group is going to be steamrollered. Just step back and let the neighborhood vet this project.

And by the way, a facility on Pier 50 won't reduce traffic. If anything it will increase it. A surprising number of fans walk from BART or downtown offices to the ballpark now. Piers 30-32 are half a mile closer to Market Street. No one will walk all the way down to Pier 50.

There is talk about how overlapping events at the 41,915-seat ballpark and the 17,500-seat arena will create sports fan gridlock. But Warner says that in the last five years the baseball and basketball schedules have only coincided "two or three times a year."

200 other events

Granted, the arena is also projected to have more than 200 other events a year. But, Warner says, "75 percent of those events average fewer than 7,000 attendees."

The reality is the Giants are probably more worried about having competition for major corporate sponsors. But they've had the field to themselves since 2000. Surely they didn't expect to have a monopoly forever.

Here's the sad reality. The Giants were the ones who proved a cool downtown sports facility could not only work, but be an asset to the neighborhood. They were the ones who showed event traffic didn't have to result in gridlock. And they did such a good job that now people want more.